Primarily it's the building and repair of classic wood & canvas canoes, and the making of premium canoe paddles. I also do custom boat building, composite fabrication, and special projects. A growing passion of mine is the making of classical guitars, I'll post about that, too.

I want to be able to share with my clients the progress of their commissioned work. Later I started thinking that there might be other people who are interested in what goes on inside a wooden canoe shop operated by an artist and a recovering teacher.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact meby email, phone, or by post. My mailing address is:

Friday, March 6, 2009

Here come the next canoe into the shop. No markings on this one, but it has Chestnut written all over it, at least to my eye. Not sure what model it might be, but I'm guessing that it might be a Cruiser. It looks pretty good, from a distance.

But look a little closer and you can see the rotten wood at the ends. Always the ends.

Take the decks out...

Cut the rotten wood out...

Fit and glue in new wood. Its much easier to fit all these pieces before hand. When I started out, I fit them afterward. It's hard to do the fitting once its all together. Once the epoxy is cured, then its time to get all the planking back on and get it ready for canvas.